Almost every week someone asks me to explain the difference between “further” and “farther.” I know you are all looking up “further vs farther,” and when I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show, a production assistant grabbed me backstage while my head was still spinning and begged me to give her a way to remember which word to use. So today, I'll try to help you with this continuing conundrum.

"Further" Versus "Farther"

The quick and dirty tip is to use “farther” for physical distance and “further” for metaphorical, or figurative, distance. It's easy to remember because “farther” has the word “far” in it, and “far” obviously relates to physical distance. These examples will help:

Imagine Squiggly and Aardvark are flying to a galaxy far, far away, but Squiggly gets bored and starts mercilessly bugging Aardvark. "How much farther?'" he keeps asking in despair.

Did you hear that? Squiggly used “farther” because he was asking about physical distance.

If Aardvark gets frustrated with Squiggly, which he surely will, he could respond, “If you complain further, I'm going to shoot you out the airlock.”

Aardvark used “further” because he isn't talking about physical distance. He's talking about a figurative distance: the extent of Squiggly's complaining.

More "Further" Versus "Farther" Tips

If you can't decide which one to use, you're safer using further because farther has some restrictions.

Sometimes the quick and dirty tip doesn't work because it's hard to decide whether you're talking about physical distance. For example, Lisa asked about the sentence “I'm further along in my book than you are in yours.” You could think of it as a physical distance through the pages and use “farther,” or as a figurative distance through the story and use “further.”

And what if you stop someone in the middle of a sentence to interject something? Do you say “before we go any further,” or “before we go any farther”?

The good news is that in ambiguous cases it doesn't matter which word you choose. Although careful writers will try to stick with the distinction between “further” and “farther,” the Oxford English Dictionary,Fowler's Modern English Usage, and a number of other sources say that, in most cases, it's fine to use “further” and “farther” interchangeably, especially when the distinction isn't clear. People have been using them interchangeably for hundreds of years, and a few experts don't even follow the distinction.

It's also different in British English. For example, Garner's Modern English Usage notes that the British use both "further" and "farther" for physical distance. (1)